While the mates this time embraced, their child came into the world.
A hair-covered crown appeared, a brow, a nose, a chin — the face of a human being: Ulrika held in her hands a living, kicking, red-skinned little creature.
But the newcomer was still tied to his mother.
“The navel cord!” Ulrika called out. “Where did I put the wool shears?”
For safety’s sake she had rinsed Kristina’s wool shears in warm water in advance; they had seemed a little dirty and rusty, and one was supposed to wash everything that touched the mother’s body during childbirth. Oh, yes, now she remembered — she had laid the shears to dry near the fire.
“On the hearth! Hand me the wool shears, Karl Oskar!”
With the old, rusty wool shears Ulrika cut the blood-red cord which still united mother and child.
Then she made that most important inspection of the newborn: “He is shaped like his father. It’s a boy!”
Kristina had given life to a son, a sturdy boy. His skin was bright red, he fluttered his arms and legs, and let out his first complaining sounds. From the warm mother-womb the child had helterskelter arrived in a cold, alien world. The mother’s cries had died down, the child’s began.
Ulrika wrapped the newborn in the towel Danjel had sent with her: “A hell of a big chunk! Hold him and feel, Karl Oskar!”
She handed the child to the father; they had no steelyard here, but she guessed he weighed at least twelve pounds. Ulrika herself had borne one that weighed thirteen and a half. She knew; the poor woman who had to squeeze out such a lump did not have an easy time. Ulrika had prayed to God to save her — an unmarried woman — from bearing such big brats; the Lord ought to reserve that honor for married women, it was easier for them to increase mankind with sturdy plants. And the Lord had gracefully heard her prayer — He had taken the child to Him before he was three months old.
Thus for the first time Karl Oskar had been present at childbed — at the birth of his third son — his fourth, counting the twin who had died.
Yes, Ulrika was right, his son weighed enough. But he lacked everything else in this world: they hadn’t a piece of cloth to swaddle him in; his little son was wrapped at birth in a borrowed towel.
Ulrika warmed some bath water for the newborn, then she held him in the pot and splashed water over his body while he yelled. And her eyes took in the child with satisfaction all the while — she felt as if he had been her own handiwork.
She said: “The boy was made in Sweden, but we must pray God this will have no ill effect on him.”
Kristina had lain quiet after her delivery. Now she asked Karl Oskar to put on the coffeepot.
She had put aside a few handfuls of coffee beans for her childbed; Ulrika had neither drunk nor eaten since her arrival last evening, they must now treat her to coffee.
“Haven’t you got anything stronger, Karl Oskar?” Ulrika asked. “Kristina must have her delivery schnapps. She has earned it this evil night.”
The delivery schnapps was part of the ritual, Karl Oskar remembered; he had given it to Kristina at her previous childbeds. And this time she needed it more than ever. There were a few swallows left in the keg of American brännvin Jonas Petter had brought to the housewarming.
“I think you could stand a drink yourself,” Ulrika said to Karl Oskar.
She finished washing the baby and handed him to the impatient mother. Meanwhile Karl Oskar prepared the coffee and served it on top of an oak-stump chair at Kristina’s bedside. He offered a mug to Ulrika, and the three of them enjoyed the warming drink. The whisky in the keg was also divided three ways — to the mother, the midwife, and the child’s father. And the father drank as much as the two women together, and he could not remember that brännvin had ever tasted so good as this morning.
While the birth had taken place inside the log house, a new day had dawned outside. It was a frosty November morning with a clear sun shining from a cloudless sky over the white, silver-strewn grass on the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.
The newly arrived Swedes in the St. Croix Valley had increased their number by one — the first one to be a citizen in their new country.
XVIII. MOTHER AND CHILD
The child is handed to the mother — it had left her and it has come back.
All is over, all is quiet, all is well.
Kristina lies with her newborn son at her breast. She lies calm and silent, she is delivered, she has changed worlds, she is in the newly delivered woman’s blissful world. It is the Glad One — the public whore of the home parish — her intimate friend, who has delivered her. But it is the child — in leaving her womb — who has delivered her from the agony; the child is her joy, and her joy is back with her, is here at her breast.
Mother and child are with each other.
The mother tries to help the child’s groping lips find a hold on her breast. The child feels with its mouth aimlessly, rubs its nose like a kitten; how wonderfully soft is its nose against the mother’s breast; as yet it seeks blindly. But when the nipple presses in between its lips, its mouth closes around it; the child sucks awkwardly and slowly. Gradually the movements of the tiny lips grow stronger — it answers her with its lips: it answers the mother’s tenderness and at the same time satisfies its own desires.
The mother lies joyful and content. The newborn has relieved her of all her old concerns, as he himself now has become all her concern. Now it is he who causes her anxiety: she hasn’t a single garment ready to swaddle his naked body, not even a piece of cloth, not the smallest rag. What can she use for swaddling clothes?
A child could not arrive in a poorer home than this, where nothing is ready for it, it could not be given to a poorer mother. Wretched creature! Arriving stark naked, to such impoverished parents, in a log house in the wilderness, in a foreign land! Wretched little creature. .
But a child could never come to a happier mother than Kristina, and therefore its security is the greatest in the world.
At her breast lies a little human seedling, entrusted to her in its helplessness and defenselessness. It depends on her if it shall grow up or wither down, if it shall live or die. And at this thought a tenderness grows inside her heart, so strong that tears come to her eyes. But they are not tears of sorrow, they are only the proof of a mother’s strong, sure feeling for her newborn child.
When God gave her this child in her poverty, He showed that He could trust her. And if the Creator trusted her, then she could wholeheartedly trust Him in return. From this conviction springs the sense of security and comfort which the child instills in the mother.
Poor little one — happy little one! Why does she worry? Why is she concerned about him? She has something fine to swaddle him in! Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She should have remembered at once: her white petticoat, the one she never uses, because it is a piece of finery. Her petticoat of thick, fine linen, woven by herself, her bridal petticoat! As yet she has used it only once — at her wedding. And for what can she use it here in the forest? Here she’ll never go to weddings, here she’ll never be so much dressed up as to need such a petticoat. She can cut it to pieces and sew diapers from it; it is large, voluminous, it will make many diapers. And she must use it because she has nothing else. But isn’t it the best thing she could ever find for protection of her child, that delicate little body, with its soft, tender skin? Her own bridal petticoat!
How happy the woman who can cut up her best petticoat for her child.